


the starry heavens and the moral law

by secondsandhours



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, F/M, Gen, Sibling Love, Time Travel, bellamy has slight PTSD, but like in the normal way, interstellar au, some spoilers for interstellar obvi, space travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-16
Updated: 2015-07-16
Packaged: 2018-04-09 14:26:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4352405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/secondsandhours/pseuds/secondsandhours
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The earth is dying, and Bellamy and Clarke have to find a new home for the human race.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the starry heavens and the moral law

**Author's Note:**

> This is by far the longest thing I have ever written, and it's taken me countless hours, so if it's awful, please spare me. I'm not a scientist by any means, so most of this is probably so wrong. I researched what I could, but I know there are tons of things I had to stretch and make up. This follows the plot of Interstellar, as most AUs like this do, but of course there are a good amount of things that came just from me. Ya know. Hope y'all like it.
> 
> Title comes from Immanuel Kant.

The sky is clear and blue, the weather is warm, but not hot, and dry. It's a perfect day for flying.

Or it should be, except the screens inside the plane are going haywire and the alarms are wailing, ear-piercingly loud. His hands are clutching the controls with everything in him. All he has to do is level it out and it'll be fine -

The plane's nose pulls up for half a second before dropping down once again and the force slams his head back into his seat, causing his vision to blur with tears. He knows he can't fix this. He's got to let it go.

He fumbles for the red eject lever below his seat just as he sees pavement through the windshield. The lever isn't budging. The ground grows closer.  _1000 feet, 700 feet, 400 feet..._

The lever gives, and he's in the air.

 

 

He opens his eyes with a start.

The first thing he notices is the pale moonlight shining in through his open window. It turns the thick layer of dust that has accumulated overnight on all of his belongings a washed out yellow color and he wishes he could sleep with his window open just  _once_  without having to sweep for an hour the next morning. The second thing he notices is his little sister lurking in the doorway.

"Sorry, O," he rasps, his voice rough with sleep and nightmares and dirt. He leans over and gulps down some water from the glass on his nightstand, makes sure to wipe the rim before he drinks. The blue numbers of his alarm clock flash  _2:39 AM_.

"You were shouting again. I was worried." She takes a few tentative steps into the room. "Was it the crash?"

He laughs, but it's shaky and entirely lacking of humor. "Isn't it always?"

"Bellamy...." she trails off. He knows what she's going to say, anyway. This isn't the first time they've had this conversation.

"I'm fine, Octavia. Go back to bed."

Instead, because she never listens to him, she comes and sits beside him on the bed. She picks at a loose thread in his sheets, her fingers twisting and pulling and twisting again. He stares, entranced, until she speaks again.

"Maybe you should take Marcus up on his offer."

Bellamy flops onto his back in exasperation. He doesn't need sleeping pills. He's tired all the time. Besides, he's been dealing with the nightmare for four years. He knows how to handle it. He tells Octavia as much. "I'm  _fine_. And what does Marcus know about it anyway? He's a retired detective, not a retired doctor. He has no business trying to prescribe medicine. That used to be illegal, you know."

Octavia drops the dark sheet and huffs, just as annoyed as her brother. She pouts out her lip and tries to blow her too-long bangs out of her face. "He's just trying to help.  _I'm_  just trying to help."

He doesn't reply to that, just gazes up at the stucco design that covers his ceiling. Octavia lies down on the empty space between him and the edge of the bed, the area only large enough for her small fourteen year old body to fit just this side of comfortably. She tilts her head so it rests on his shoulder.

"Does it still hurt?" she asks softly. She's referring to the spot on his head where he acquired a concussion during his crash. (In the months following, it had caused him a lot of problems. He racked up hundreds of dollars in doctor visits, sure there was a fracture or something that they kept missing in the x-rays. It took three months and two unwanted visits to a psychiatrist to figure out it was a phantom pain, caused by a mild form of PTSD.)

 _Yes, every day_ , he says. "Not as much as it used to," he tells her.

She pokes his side. "Liar."

"What would you know about it?" he asks, but it's muffled by a yawn. Already, he can feel fatigue creeping back in on him.

"I know enough about you to know when you're lying, big brother." She pushes herself to her feet. "Get some sleep. And try not to wake me up this time."

The last thing he sees before darkness overtakes him is Octavia placing a piece of paper over his water glass to keep out the dirt.

 

 

They don't know how to stop the dust storms.

They can't adapt their farming techniques any further, like they did during the Dust Bowl. They rarely get rain, and the only water they can use unsparingly has to go straight to the crops. There's a new storm verging on every week, and they can't figure out how to stop it.

The news says professionals are "working on it." But everyone knows that's a lie.

Deep down, everyone knows this endless, smothering drought means something awful. The facts are that this is the driest the earth has been in one hundred and fifty-odd years, that more and more crops are failing to take to the soil, that people are dying. Dehydrating. Suffocating. Starving.

They can't last much longer like this.

This is what Bellamy is thinking of now as he stands in the middle of his field. He wipes off his thousandth ear of corn of the day before pulling down the outer leaves and twisting it off the stalk. He wipes off his thousandth drop of sweat in the last hour and wonders,  _why?_

_What is the point when these crops will go, just like the rest?_

He's at it for hours, shucking again and again, until his fingers split open and his palms blister. It's like this almost every day, dawn to dusk. The old machines he'd rewired to harvest help a lot, but there's only two of them. Even with their help, there are still dozens of rows that have to be pulled by hand. He thanks a god he doesn't believe in for Marcus Kane's help. Bellamy doesn't even want to think where he would be without him.

Kane is behind him now, squinting out at the southern horizon and the sandy colored cloud rising above it. His gloved hand is raised to the sky to block the sun from his eyes as he turns to Bellamy. "You're probably going to have to postpone your fishing trip with Octavia tomorrow. There's no way anything will bite the day after a dusting."

Bellamy knows he's right. "At this rate, I'll have to cancel all our future outings. These things are popping up so frequently I'm starting to wonder how they haven't run out of dirt."

Kane laughs a little and pulls off his gloves. "I know what you mean."

"Hey, you two. You're supposed to be working, not laughing. What's going on here?"

Bellamy looks over his shoulder and sees Octavia in the next row over, corn towering high above her. She's got both hands wrapped around glasses of water, condensation already dripping down the sides. "Thought you two might be thirsty, considering you've been out here all day and haven't come inside once," she says. She reaches between a couple stalks to hand them the drinks.

He drowns his in seconds, gasping for air when he finishes. There's something about cold water that tastes better than anything else when you're truly thirsty. "Thanks, O." He hands his empty glass back to her and wipes his mouth on the back of his hand, dirt be damned. "Look, I think we may have to reschedule our plans for tomorrow." He nods at the cloud, swiftly blowing closer to the farm. "You know how the fish are after a storm."

The disappointment that flashes across her face twists Bellamy's stomach. This is a common occurrence in her life, one he wishes he could change every single goddamn time.

Octavia walks back to the house, and Bellamy prays to that same god he doesn't believe in for a downpour.

 

 

The four of them - Bellamy, Octavia, Marcus, and Aurora - sit in the living room during these storms. They listen to the rage of the wind and the slap of dirt against the house. Sometimes they do their own things; Aurora sewing a random article of clothing, Kane cleaning the day's work off his boots, Octavia and Bellamy coming up with some odd little invention that usually turns out to be useless. Other times, the two kids sit and listen to their mother and their farmhand tell stories about before, when everything was green and vibrant and happier. A couple times, Octavia convinced them to try out her Ouija board, but after she asked who they were talking to and the triangle seer spelled out "Satan," they threw the board out.

Right now, they're all sitting on the floor, arranged haphazardly around a game of Scrabble.

"-T-I-A-N," Octavia spells. "Nudiustertian."

Bellamy gapes at her. "There is no way in hell that that is a word."

She sticks her tongue out at him. "Actually, it is. It's a noun, meaning the day after yesterday." When he barks a laugh, she slaps his arm. "It is!"

"Okay!" He raises his arms in defeat. "Nudiustertian. Sure."

"Where did you learn that? Surely they aren't teaching you SAT words in the ninth grade," Aurora says.

"No," Octavia says. "I was just reading a dictionary."

Bellamy is about to reply, either to call her a nerd or tell her he's proud of her, when his phone rings. "Be right back," he mutters and rushes to the kitchen. He doesn't recognize the number flashing on the screen, but not many people have  _his_ number, so he answers anyway.

"Hello?"

"Bellamy? Bellamy Blake?" The storm is cause for a bad connection, so he can barely make out the man's words through the static.

"Yeah, who is this?"

The line goes quiet for a minute, and Bellamy's sure the call dropped. He's about to hang up when the voice cuts in, clear as day and familiar as his own.

"Hey, kiddo. It's Jake Griffin. We need to have a conversation."

 

 

"You want me to  _what?"_

He's sitting in a large, oval conference room at a large, oval table surrounded by employees of NASA. The people he used to work for.

"I don't want you to do anything, Bellamy. I  _need_ you to fly for us again," Professor Jake Griffin says from where he sits directly across the table. He waits calmly, like he didn't just blindside Bellamy from every direction.

Bellamy shakes his head, mouth searching for words. "I...I can't do that. I mean...right? I can't get back up there after what happened last time." He leans forward and clasps his hands together on top of the cool oak of the table. "Why do you want me?"

Jake looks a little perplexed. "You're the best pilot I've ever had. As for what happened last time, I know that wasn't your fault, and I know that  _you_ know that wasn't your fault. If you're worried about it happening again, I assure you that flying a spacecraft is different from flying a plane. We've been working on this shuttle for months. You're going to be fine."

The words are familiar. They're the same ones he'd said to Bellamy before sending him up in the air that day.  _You're going to be fine._

Bellamy looks around the room. He knows everyone in this here on some level, with the exception of Jake's wife and daughter. He takes everyone in, cataloging the obvious changes in them since he last saw them four years before. There's Senator Thelonious Jaha, the man in charge of the administration, sitting unsurprisingly at the head of the table. Beside him is Jake, and beside him is Abigail Griffin, the new head of the medical wing and Jake's wife. To Bellamy's right is Raven Reyes, an ex-random-hookup and a bit of a know-it-all, but for good reason. She's the best mechanic Bellamy's ever met. Next to her is Nathan Miller, a pilot just like Bellamy, and one of his oldest friends. There's Finn Collins, renown peacekeeper who, oddly enough, got off on trying - and failing - to one up Bellamy during their days at the academy. At the other end of the table, facing Jaha, sits Clarke Griffin. She's a doctor like her mother, if his memories of Jake bragging stand true.

Bellamy had stopped believing a long time ago that he'd ever be around these people again.

"Why do you need me?" he asks, turning back to Jake.

When Jake hesitates to answer, Bellamy knows it must be serious. His thoughts are confirmed when Clarke answers instead, speaking for the first time since he met her twenty minutes before.

"The earth is dying," she says, matter-of-fact, not a hint of joking to be found in her eyes that even from this far down the table Bellamy can tell are dark blue. He supposes that if what she just said is true, she doesn't have a choice but to be heart attack serious. "Surely you're aware of that. You worked here for almost a decade, Mr. Blake, long enough to know that if there were a solution to the dust storms, we would have found it by now." And Bellamy knows she's right, deep in his gut. He thinks about it every time he watches the news, thinks about it every time he has to cancel on Octavia because of the weather.

Even so, he can't wrap his head around it. "So what's your plan?"

Clarke pushes away from the table and walks to a large projector at the front of the room, grabbing a remote from where her mother sits on the way. She presses a few buttons, and the lights in the room dim. Bellamy watches her until images start pulling up on the screen. It's a series of pictures of empty space next to what Bellamy can tell is Saturn, only after about four images, the space isn't so empty anymore.

"A wormhole," he murmurs, staring at the impossible warp of space.

"Yes," Clarke confirms. "About a thousand miles right of Saturn."

"So what does that mean?" he asks. He literally can't believe his eyes.

Clarke turns and smiles, small and knowing. "Maybe we'd better show you."

 

 

All of the education Bellamy has, the Bachelor's degree in physical science from Carnegie Mellon and the Associate's degree in mathematics from MIT, the years spent at the NASA Aviation Academy, the years spent actually out in the field, can't prepare him for what they're trying to tell him. He's standing in a massive cylindrical space shuttle designed to get the entire human race off the earth with Jake standing behind him, and he can't wrap his head around it, not even a little bit.

"I don't think we were meant to fix this world, son," Jake says from behind him. "I think we were meant to leave it."

Bellamy looks up. They're on the sixteenth floor, and the shuttle rises far above them even that high up. It's one of six stations the administration is working on to ensure the survival of the remaining five hundred million, give or take, of earth's inhabitants.

(Jake used to tell Bellamy, back when they worked together, that before the drought, before the blight, before the pandemics, there were over seven billion people alive on earth. Seven billion. It's still unfathomable.)

"Ten years ago," Jake begins, leaning on the railing to the left of Bellamy, "we sent twelve people through that wormhole, separately. The Hundred mission. Probes sent out prior to that send back some incredible information. On the other side of that wormhole is a twelve planet solar system, much like our own. They orbit a black hole, but they're far enough away that some of them may even be habitable. Twelve brave people, twelve heroes, on a mission to save us all. And now we're about to send four more, or five, if I can convince you, to retrieve some survivors and data, so that we can find our new home."

Bellamy looks at Jake, and he almost wants to laugh in his face. The man wants to send him on a trip across space to a different galaxy that's who knows how far away. Without his mother. Without Octavia. No. No way. "I won't do it."

Jake nods, like he expected that answer, and looks down at the hundreds of people below, all working on various parts of this vehicle. Bellamy looks down too, and part of him wants to count every single person, add up the number of people that will die if the mission doesn't work, if none of the planets are viable for life.

"I understand why you won't go. You're afraid of leaving your family, and trust me, I get it. I'm sending my daughter, my only child, on this mission. Thelonious sent his only son. I know that pull you feel, that obligation you have to them. Your mother and your sister are very lucky to have you looking after them." He turns his gaze back to Bellamy, and his eyes are stony and hard in a way that Bellamy has never seen before. "But you have the opportunity here to make sure they're able to fully live out the rest of their lives. You have the opportunity to save them. To save Octavia, to save Octavia's children." It's a low blow, one that Jake knows will work, because Jake knows just how much Octavia means to Bellamy.

His head throbs.

"Save your sister, Bellamy."

And really, that's the only convincing he needs.

 

 

When Octavia was eleven and Bellamy had been away from NASA for about a year, he took her on a camping trip.

The year had been a good one for farming, the best in a decade, and they were getting rain showers pretty frequently (by which he means around twice a month). Things were looking up for them. Bellamy decided to have a mini celebration.

He took them out to a secluded area in West Virginia, a place in the middle of a forest, undisturbed for years. They set up in a circular clearing where the trees opened up enough to see a good bit of the sky. Twenty feet away was a swimming hole, and Octavia immediately jumped in once they'd settled, laughing so loudly and freely that Bellamy didn't ever want her to stop.

They spent the entire first day swimming and jumping over the small waterfall that curved over into the hole, and that night, when the water grew just a little too cold to stand any longer, they built a fire and lied on the ground, staring up at the stars.

"Right there is Ophiuchus, and over there is Virgo. Orion would normally be right around there, but it only shows up in the fall and winter," Bellamy said, pointing up at a few areas in the sky. Octavia spent several minutes on each constellation, studying each one, connecting the stars over and over in her mind until she was sure she would always be able to find them.

They went silent for a long time, just watching the endless dark of the sky as it rotated over their heads. Bellamy, warm and dry from the fire, was just about to drift off to sleep when Octavia spoke.

"Do you think we'll ever send people out there? To those stars, I mean."

Bellamy rubbed at his eyes. "I don't know," he said through a yawn. "I know NASA has plans to, but I don't know if it's a feat we'll ever accomplish. If it does happen, I'm not sure it'll be during either of our lifetimes. They're so far away. We haven't developed the equipment for that kind of travel just yet."

He heard Octavia shuffle beside him. When he turned his head, he saw that she was lying on her side facing him, sleeping bag pulled up to her chin.

"Did you want to go out there?"

It was a slightly daring question. Bellamy rarely ever talked about his time spent flying, in the days after the crash. Even now, he could feel the drop of his stomach as his seat launched out of the aircraft. The cricket chirps around them turned to frantic beeping. The only thing that kept him steady, kept him from going back to that day entirely, was his sister's eyes boring into his own from three feet away, soft and concerned.

"Yeah," he whispered gruffly. "Yeah, I did."

 

 

They find themselves in that same clearing now, almost exactly three years later, looking up at those same stars. Bellamy spends a lot of time just staring at Octavia, seeing both the baby-faced eleven year old she'd been then, and the tall, thin force of nature she is now.

God, he is going to miss his sister.

He's trying to figure out how to break the news to her when she blurts it out for him, always a step ahead.

"When do you leave?"

His mouth is hanging open with "I need to talk to you" ready to come out, but he backtracks quickly. "What?"

"When do you leave on your mission?" she asks.

"How...how do you know about that?"

Octavia just stares at him pointedly. "Come on, Bell. I know were you went the other night. I know who you've been on the phone with every day since. I heard you talking about a mission yesterday in your room. Don't think I've forgotten what your dream used to be."

Bellamy scoffs. "You were eavesdropping?"

"Don't change the subject," she snaps. He has no idea what to say to her. He should have known she would have figured it out. Octavia has always been extremely perceptive.

"I should have told you as soon as I knew I was going," he says finally, quiet and guilty.

She picks at a thread in her blanket, fingers dancing with the string the same way Bellamy's seen them do countless other times. She's developed a nervous habit. "Yeah, you should have," she whispers and it's so soft and sad and he can hear the thinly veiled betrayal in her voice even though she's trying to hide it and his heart starts breaking already. "I've been wondering about it all week, but when you asked me this morning if I wanted to come out to this spot, well.... That's when I knew for sure. This is your first goodbye."

There's so much to say - too much - and Bellamy doesn't want to rush into it, doesn't want to overwhelm her with the details, so he lets her control the conversation.

"How long?" she asks.

Too long. "I don't know. Years. Probably a lot of them," he admits, and it's so damn hard because her shoulders are rising and falling with deep, shattered breaths, and she's making this god awful sound in the back of her throat every time she inhales. It's something between a whimper and a squeak, and he's never going to be able to get it out of his head. He waits until the first tear falls from her eye, and then he's scooting closer and gathering her up.

She cries for a long time, soaking his shirt through to his skin. Her sobs drown out the noise of the forest around them, sounds foreign and harsh to the crickets and owls and nocturnal critters. At one point, he has to look up and blink the tears away from his own eyes. He trains his sight on Lyra until eventually, her sobs turn to gasps turn to hiccups and she falls against him, completely exhausted.

"I know you have to go," she says when she's caught her breath. "I know this is important and I know it's a big deal for you, especially after your crash. That doesn't make it suck any less."

"I told Jake no, at first," he tells her. "But then he told me I was getting the chance to save you, and I knew I had no choice but to take it." Bellamy pulls her up so he can look at her directly. "Octavia, you're my sister. You're my responsibility. I've always done what I could to make sure you were safe, and that's exactly what I'm doing now. This is about saving our species to the others, but to me, it's just about saving you."

She pulls away completely. "I don't need you to save me!" she shouts. "I need you to be in my life."

"You think I don't want to be around for that? O, the thought of leaving you here to live a life I don't get to be a part of kills me. But I need to make sure you have a reason to live that life, a reason to get married and have kids and grow up in the first place. If I don't go, I don't have to miss all of that, but if I don't go, if I'm not there to help them and this mission fails? Then you and your children and your grandchildren will only live long enough to watch the world die. And that is  _not_ what I want for you." He says it all fiercely and with so much conviction that she can't find in within herself to argue. All she can do is curl back into him and let her eyes trace the stars in the sky.

 

 

Bellamy goes back to NASA a few days later to get some last minute things sorted. There's paperwork to be signed, measurements to be taken for his spacesuit and clothing supply, and he has to get an up-to-date physical done. The measurements and paperwork only last a couple hours, but all of the doctors are busy when he's free, so he kills time by walking around. The headquarters have changed a lot since he quit. The building is larger, for one, several wings having been added on in the recent years. That's surprising, considering the government wanted to stop funding the administration years ago. Bellamy assumes most of the money put into renovations came from Senator Jaha's very own, very deep pocket.

He's sitting alone on a bench, checking his watch and deciding whether or not he should wait around any longer when Clarke walks up to him. She sits down next to him and takes a long, obnoxiously loud pull of soda. It rattles the whole way up the straw.

"I hear you're in need of a doctor for a physical," she says. "It just so happens that I, myself, am a doctor, who is capable of conducting a physical."

In the back of his mind, Bellamy thinks she's kind of cute when she says this, and he figures it wouldn't hurt to flirt a little, since they're about to travel across space together. "You sound a tad eager, Dr. Griffin. Usually I prefer going to dinner before I let my dates feel me up, but I suppose making an acception this one time won't hurt."

She smirks. "You've caught me. All I've been thinking about these last couple of weeks is getting my hands down your pants while I ask you to cough. Tell me," she says, taps her chin with her index finger, "is that how foreplay always goes with you?"

He wasn't expecting to get it back as good as he gave it, so he really enjoys it. "Well, well. I didn't take you as being so forward."

"And I didn't take you as being such a bad flirt, but I guess now we know." She tosses her empty paper cup into the trash can beside the bench. "Really though, I'm qualified, and you're just sitting here wasting time. I've got an empty exam room ready now."

"That's great and all, but I actually do think I'd rather have someone else do it. How are you supposed to continue to find me sexy when you have to perform such unsexy acts on me in the terms of health?" he jokes, but honestly, the thought of her overseeing makes him squirm.

She stares at him, deadpan. "First of all, I am an adult, trained to do these things and act like an adult about them. It's purely medical. Second, you're implying I find you sexy now, and I would hate to burst your bubble."

Bellamy mocks offense. "Maybe you're the one in need of a physical, Dr. Griffin. You must be blind."

She stands, straightens her navy pencil skirt, and then walks away, blond waves bouncing behind her with every step. "I already had my physical, Mr. Blake, and I have perfect vision. Twenty-nineteen." And then she's turning into the vacant exam room, leaving the door open for him to follow.

 

 

"See," she says, pulling off her pale gloves with a snap, "that wasn't so bad."

Bellamy shrugs on his white t-shirt, ready to get out of the room and maybe away from Clarke. "If by 'wasn't so bad,' you mean 'mortifying,' then I agree completely."

Clarke laughs, genuine and high. "Stop it. You're just upset because now you're going to have a hard time flirting with me."

Well. She's not wrong.

She places the clipboard with his charts on it in the pocket on the door and then goes to leave. "Meet me out here when you're done. I have something I want to show you."

He finishes pulling on his pants and boots before walking out to find Clarke. She's leaning against the wall outside his room, and when she sees him, she starts walking away without a word. He follows her without question. She leads him to an elevator and presses the button for the twenty-seventh floor once he's inside. His stomach drops as they start ascending.

"My father told you about the plan to get the people off the planet, but he didn't tell you about our backup plan if that doesn't work," she says as they exit the elevator. They head down a corridor to the right and into a pristine white room that's colder than his freezer at home. The walls are lined with dozens of machines, each humming loudly. "There's a problem with the equation, mainly that neither he nor any of the other brainiacs working on it know how to solve it. They need to figure out how to create gravity for the stations. It's easier out there on small spacecrafts like the Ark, which is what we'll be docking on when we leave, but the size and shape of these stations makes it more difficult. So if Plan A, the equation, can't be solved, there's Plan B." Clarke pulls on a white lab coat and thick rubber gloves. She leans down to open one of the machines. It hisses when it unlocks, and out comes a shiny steel cylinder, so cold a cloud of vapor rises off of it.

"Cryotanks," Bellamy observes.

Clarke smiles. "Exactly."

He's overcome with anger so suddenly it almost knocks him backwards. "This is your backup plan? Thousands of frozen embryos that you'll just set up on whatever planet can sustain human life?" he practically shouts. Clarke appears completely unfazed by his outburst. She just locks up the cryotank once again and throws her gloves in a bin. "What does this mean for the people down here? For the coming generations? We're just going to let them die out?" His hands are clenched so tight at his sides that he can feel his pulse in his knuckles.

"I didn't show you this to piss you off, Bellamy. I showed it to you so you could understand that you're doing the right thing. Going out there, relaying the information we find around the black hole, that is going to help solve the equation." Clarke walks forward until she's standing directly in front of Bellamy, less than a foot of space between them. He's struck with how much she looks like her father, in her eyes and her bone structure. She's a lot shorter than he realized the first time he met her, back in that conference room, and she has to tilt her head slightly to look at him. "I know you've been having trouble with the thought of Octavia. Trust me, I get it. I don't want to leave my father. But this is why we have to go. I don't want to have to resort to Plan B. Up there, we can help. Down here, we can't. We needed a second pilot, and Dad called you, and you came. There's a reason you're here, and you know that reason is that you want to save everyone. Just like all of us. Just like me."

He stares down at her for several drawn out seconds. In the bright fluorescent lighting of the room, he notices her eyes aren't dark blue like he initially thought. They're paler, almost gray. It's a cold color, but he finds himself fond of it.

"Okay," he says finally. "Let's go with Plan A."

 

 

Telling Aurora goes worse than telling Octavia.

He sits her down at their ring-stained kitchen table and says, "I'm going on a mission in two weeks," and somehow his mother knows, just  _knows,_  that this might be permanent. That he might not come back from this one.

"No. No, you are not. You are going to tell Jake Griffin 'no,' and you are going to stay here with us. You have responsibilities that you have to take care of. You have the farm, and Octavia, and...and...just.... No." She shoves herself away from the table, her chair slamming into the wall behind her. She's frantic and angry as she pulls plates out of the cabinet for dinner, dropping them on the marble counter tops instead of setting them. It's when she shatters one of the plates that he jumps up and points to the stairs, silently telling Octavia to sit this one out in her bedroom. He listens to her feet hit each step on the way up and grabs the small plastic trash can from the pantry.

"Mom," he says, picking up the largest pieces of split ceramic first. "I have to go. If it weren't absolutely necessary, you know I would have turned him down, but it is, so I said I'd go." He stands up and grabs her wrist just before she drops another plate and gently forces her to turn to him. "I have to do this," he tells her.

Her face is stained with black streaks where she's cried through her mascara. Her voice is shaking and awful so similar to Octavia's in the woods and  _fuck,_  Bellamy wishes he could stop being the reason the women he loves cry.

"I almost lost you once in that crash, Bellamy Blake. I won't do it again. I need you here. Octavia needs you here," she pleads. "She's your sister, your -"

"My responsibility," he finishes, echoing the words Aurora told him the day Octavia had been born, setting her tiny form into his shaking hands. "I know. I've already talked to her. That night we went camping last week, I told her. She understands why I'm doing what I'm doing. I need to know that you understand it too."

Her bloodshot hazel eyes flit back and forth between his own, and he sees the defeat in them. Much like him with Octavia, Aurora has never been able to stop Bellamy from doing anything he'd set his mind to. "This world has never been enough for you, has it? Even after the crash, you want to leave."

It's the truth. His dreams were always out there. Never down here.

"I'm sorry, Mom. This is for the better. I'm doing it for Octavia," he chokes out.

They stand silent in the kitchen, surrounded by shards of ceramic and a layer of dust that's settled on everything, undisturbed. They don't speak, and the only noise comes from the television set in the living room that Octavia left on when she ran upstairs.

Finally, his mother says, "Fine," and then leaves the room.

 

 

He calls Clarke later that night, after his mother stays locked up in her bedroom and he and Octavia sit solemnly in the living room eating leftover meatloaf. He's sitting in his room on his bed, all the lights off, and waits as the phone rings. She picks up on the seventh ring, just as he's about to hang up.

"Bellamy Blake," she says. "How'd you get this number?"

He's thrown off momentarily. "There's only one Clarke Griffin in the phone book. How'd you know it was me?"

"Oh, I got your number from my father. I didn't know if I may need you for something before we take off, so I figured it would be good to have on hand," she explains simply. "What's going on?"

He doesn't know what to say, doesn't want to talk about his mother, doesn't want to talk about his sister, doesn't want to talk much at all, really. He runs his free hand through his dark mess of curls that need to be cut before they leave and sighs, sharp and heavy.

She must hear his exhale because there's more concern in her voice when she speaks again. "Bellamy? What's wrong?"

He shakes his head, knows she can't see it, doesn't care. He's about to tell her to forget it and that he's sorry that he called, but he asks her a question instead.

"Are you scared?"

It takes him by surprise. It takes her by surprise too, if her pause is any indication. The silence is so broad and deep it threatens to swallow him whole. He finds himself actually curious about her answer, hoping he's not alone in his fear, hoping the solidarity will make him feel better somehow.

"Yes," she says, barely a whisper. "I'm scared."

It doesn't make him feel better at all.

 

 

They make him write up a will three days before it's time to leave.

He understands why, absolutely. There's no telling what's going to happen to them out there, and the administration needs to know what to do in the (very possible) event that he doesn't make it back from this trip. Even though he already knows what happens to all of his belongings, it's still extremely hard on him.

He stares at the blank paper, biting the skin off his bottom lip.

 _Octavia gets everything,_ he writes. He signs his name below it.

It's a lot realer when it's down on paper.

 

 

Bellamy finds himself at Clarke’s apartment that night, a paper bag containing a wine bottle in hand. He rings the doorbell, not even taking into account that it’s two in the morning and she’s probably asleep.

By a stroke of luck, or maybe not, she isn’t. She opens the door, dressed for bed in a satin black nightgown and a dark green robe, but definitely wide awake. She takes in his sad appearance, eyes lingering on the bag hanging by his knee.

“It’s just as easy to find your address as it is your phone number,” he says and then adds, “I had to write my will today.”

He isn’t sure she’s going to let him in with the expressionless way she’s looking at him, but then she turns and stalks back into her apartment.

“If that’s wine, lock the door behind you,” she calls. He does.

He navigates through the apartment easily and finds Clarke lounging on her queen size bed, scrolling through her TV guide. He stops in the doorway, suddenly wondering if this was a mistake. He doesn’t know why he came here, just that Clarke has been honest with him since he met her, and there’s something about her that makes her easy to talk to. Even so, he feels like this, her in her sleepwear and him standing there with alcohol, is something he wasn’t ever supposed to know.

Assuming her invitation inside means he’s free to sit where he pleases, he crawls up beside her, flopping onto her pillows, head resting on the wall behind them. He slides the wine out of the bag, pops the cork out easily, and hands the bottle to her. She takes a sip without so much as reading the label.

They sit for awhile, barely drinking and not talking, the only sound coming from a rerun of FRIENDS. Ross and Rachel are breaking up for the eighth time when she speaks.

“My father’s dying.”

Bellamy turns to her, incredulous look on his face. “What?”

Clarke nods and takes another swig. “Cancer,” she says when she swallows. “Liver cancer. He just found out a couple months ago.”

This has to be a joke. “But he looks fine.... I don’t....”

“It’s stage two. Not easy to treat, but not impossible either, or at least it didn’t use to be. Mom says it was more than likely caused by exposure to aflatoxins. Of course, that’s not too uncommon these days, with how many crops are stored poorly because there’s so much growing that needs to be done.” She turns in the bed, and even in the dim lighting of the room, he’s caught in the pale blue of her eyes once again. “He’s going to die, and I’m going to be across the universe when it happens.”

“Clarke....” he trails off. There’s not much to say to someone in this situation.

Suddenly she’s jumping off the bed, almost full wine bottle swinging in her grasp. The red liquid sloshes about, and he watches it for a minute before turning his attention to her. She shuts off the TV and starts to pace back and forth at the foot of the bed. “I’ve got to keep a level head, you know? I have to appear strong, because I’ve been working towards this mission longer than anyone else, and if I start breaking, what does that mean for the others? But my dad is dying, and my mom won’t help him, and I don’t know how I’m supposed to go up there and save the world without wishing, every single second, that I never left.” She’s verging on hysterical, but Bellamy lets her rant. “This is supposed to be a mission led by selfless people, but all I want is to be selfish and stay home. And you - God - you, Bellamy! You deserve to be able to be selfish too! You’re going to miss out on so much of Octavia’s life. And for what?” She downs another few gulps of wine and keeps going. “Why is it that it’s us that have to give these things up? Why do we have to make these sacrifices?”

“‘The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few,’” he quotes.

Clarke spins around, almost delirious with the battle waging inside her. “Did you just quote Star Trek?”

That pulls a laugh from him. “Dickens, actually. Clarke, listen.” He stands and walks to her. He pulls the bottle from her hand, and she lets it go easily. “Leaving Octavia is going to hurt. It’s going to hurt like nothing else that has ever hurt me before.” He sets the wine on the night stand behind him and turns back. His hands find Clarke’s shoulders, one side bare where her robe has fallen down her arm. She shivers ever so slightly at the touch of his fingers on her skin. “But Octavia gets it. Octavia would do the same thing if the positions were swapped. She’d do this, and she’d have no qualms or reservations about it. She understands that I have to do this. That’s what I’ve been trying to remember since I decided to go.”

She doesn’t answer, just stares up at him sadly, and then something changes. The atmosphere around them grows tenser, the space between them grows smaller, and then they’re wrapped up in one another’s arms, kissing.

It’s feverish and hungry, full of fear and anxiety and, on some level, anger. Not with each other, just with their situations. Bellamy slants his mouth over Clarke’s and fits his arms tight around her waist, pulling her up and flush against him. Her hands are clasped behind his neck, and when she lets out a quiet moan and her nails brush against his head, it drives him crazy in the very best way.

They move back towards the bed where he lays her down. They break apart while he rids himself of his jacket and t-shirt, and then he moves up her body until their mouths find each other again. They take their time, knowing that this will be the last time for a long time, maybe even ever, that either of them will have this sort of interaction. It’s slow, and it’s all the better for it. Her hands are everywhere: his back, his abdomen, his cheek.

His waist.

The zipper of his jeans.

Lower.

Every place she touches him is on fire. He knows it’s cliche, knows it’s impossible, but he still swears there are invisible sparks hopping off his skin every time she moves against him. He’s hot and breathless and bare. She’s still fully clothed.

He maneuvers them so he’s sitting up and she’s straddling him, knees bent on either side of his hips. He dances his fingers along her collarbone, touches feather-soft where they meet her skin. He slips her robe off of her shoulders and it pools around her. The fabric is smooth and cool where it touches his legs, and he takes it all in. He wants to remember this, when he’s up there. He wants to memorize every feeling, every sound, every taste. He wants - needs - to commit this to memory; Clarke Griffin, hair knotted, face flushed, and looking down at him just like this.

He stares at her for what’s probably the longest minute of his life, and then he places his hands on her thighs, beneath her gown. He pushes it up, up, up, until she’s just as exposed as he is. He rolls them over again, and she reaches for the drawer of her bedside table. She hands him a condom, and he’s just about to open it when she stops him, hand pressed to his chest.

“Wait,” she gasps. “Just...wait a second.” He stills instantly, ready to back off completely at her word, but she wraps her hands around his shoulders and pulls him back down to her. “I just need you to know that this is a one time thing. Up there, we can’t do this. I need to know that you know that.”

He gets it completely. This is one of their last nights on earth. They’re letting off some steam and getting this done while they still have the chance.

“Okay,” he says. “I know.”

He moves to kiss her again.

 

 

"Okay. It's time."

The room is empty, save for the three Blakes and Marcus. Each of the astronauts are getting the chance to say goodbye to their families privately on the base. They have twenty minutes before the five of them need to be in the preparation area getting suited up. It's time to leave.

Bellamy shakes Kane's hand first, and then thinks better of it and gives the man he's known for the better half of fifteen years a hug. He grinds his teeth together, knowing this is likely the last time he'll ever see Marcus or Aurora ever again. The relativity of space time compared to time on earth means they'll probably both be gone by the time he returns.

"Don't worry about anything down here, son," Marcus says as he pulls away. "I'm going to take good care of your farm."

Bellamy smiles. It doesn't reach his eyes. "I'm more concerned about you taking good care of my family."

Marcus looks over at the two women watching them earnestly. "Yeah. I've got that covered too."

Bellamy moves onto his mother next. There's too much to say to her and not enough time, so he just holds her tight and hopes she understands in that way mothers always seem to be able to. They've hardly spoken since their fight the night he told her, and he hates that he's leaving things that way, cracked and resentful and sad. She must understand at least a little bit, because she pulls him close and cradles his head the way she did when he was young.

She brings her mouth close to his ear. "My boy. I love you. You are brave and strong and I am so proud of you. I hope you know that. I'm sorry I've made things such a mess, but the thought of losing you.... It's unbearable." She kisses his cheek multiple times, and he's grateful instead of embarrassed like he used to get.

He can't say much in return, just chokes out "I love you," and lets her go for the last time.

It's Octavia that breaks him.

She's hesitant to hug him and he gets it because the sooner she grabs on, the sooner she has to let go, so she stalls, but then his arms go under hers and hers go around his neck and he can feel her pulse where their necks are touching and it's rapid and flighty like a hummingbird and goddammit, he does not want to let go. His sister has been the most important thing to him since the day she was born. He tries to console himself, tells himself he's lived without her before, did it for eighteen years. But it doesn't help, because his life has always been split into two parts: Before Octavia, and After Octavia, and the after has always been better.

"Please - Bellamy, I changed my mind. Please don't go. I don't want you to go." She starts sobbing into his shoulder the same way she did in the clearing. The way she shakes rattles him to the bone.

"I have to, O," he mutters. "You know I have to."

It just makes her cry harder. He looks up and through the open doorway, where across the hall Clarke is holding onto her father the same way Bellamy is holding onto his sister. Jake's words echo loudly in his ears.

_You have the opportunity to save them. To save Octavia._

_Save your sister._

It's at this moment that Raven walks by in the hallway. She catches his eye and points to her watch. He nods. Message received. Time's up.

"Octavia, listen to me." Bellamy pulls away from her and ducks down so their the same height. Her green eyes are sadder than he's ever seen him. "I will come back to you. I'm coming back. I promise, no matter what, this will not be the last time we see each other. I love you. And I'm coming back."

"But  _when?"_ she cries.

"I don't have an answer for that. I'm so sorry. You know me, though. You know I never break my promises." He hugs her close to his chest and kisses the crown of her head. Then he lets go. "I'm coming back," he repeats as he heads for the door. "I'm coming back."

He barely makes it to the preparation deck before he hits his knees.

 

 

_"Thirty seconds to launch."_

Bellamy flips the necessary switches, ready to ignite the engines on mark. His head goes to a day four years ago, sunny and clear much like this one, where he sat in a very similar position.

 _No,_ he thinks.  _You're going to make it this time._

_You're going to be fine._

"Engines ready," he hears Raven say.

_"Ten seconds to launch. Nine.... Eight.... Seven.... Six.... Five...."_

"Engines on!" Raven shouts. Bellamy presses the ignition button and the shuttle roars with the force of the flames.

_"Three...._

_"Two...."_

His head throbs, worse than it has in weeks.

_"One...."_

Lift off.

 

 

Octavia sits on the lawn of the spectator area, watching the sky long after the shuttle has disappeared and the smoke has dispersed. She drags a blade of grass through her fingers, pulling it, trying to calm herself with the repetition. Her eyes hurt, both from crying and from squinting against the sun.

Her heart hurts. Just because.

She plans to sit there, alone, until her mother or Marcus has to forcibly drag her away.

A little while later, after she's pulled up enough grass to make a small, disgusting salad, Marcus comes to sit beside her. He's holding a good sized wooden box with her initials carved into the top.

"He wanted me to give this to you after he was gone," he says and hands her the box. "He put it together in the weeks before he left."

She waits until Marcus leaves to open it. Inside, she finds a bunch of pictures of the two of them. She looks through all of them, carefully, taking her time, stopping on one taken just before she'd left to go to one of her school dances. It had been a masquerade dance of sorts, and he'd made her a gorgeous dark blue mask out of stuff they'd had lying around the house. They're grinning wide in the picture. It had been a good day.

She puts it at the bottom of the stack.

There are other things, too. She finds a map of their journey, rich with detail, signed by  _CG_ in the bottom left corner, and a thick silver bracelet he knew she'd wanted for months. At the very bottom is a piece of paper rolled up like a scroll. She pulls the violet colored ribbon from around the paper and unfurls it.

_O,_

_I couldn't give this to you myself because I knew it would have been too hard to watch you look through it, so I gave it to Marcus. I know we both wish it could have been different._

_Stapled to the back of this note is another piece of paper, one I hope you'll keep. It's so you know that no matter where I go up here, you'll always be here with me._

_I love you, little sister._

_Bellamy_

Octavia sniffs and wipes her eyes on her sleeves when she's done reading the note. She flips it over to the second sheet. She gasps when she reads it.

It's a certificate for a star. One named Octavia Lucilla Blake.

 

 

"We're seven minutes out from the Ark," Raven says.

The crew members unbuckle from their seats to take their positions for the docking process. Bellamy stays situated at the front, watching the screens and steering them in the right direction.

"Can you believe we're actually out here?" Raven asks from somewhere in the back of the shuttle. Her voice is giddy, full of excitement, and it reminds him of -

Not now.

"Yeah, Raven, I can. It's kind of what we've been planning on happening," Finn taunts. Bellamy sees him out of the corner of his eye messing with with the controls for the docking port.

"You know what I mean. We've spent our entire lives dreaming of being up here, and we've finally made it. It's exciting."

"Don't get ahead of yourself, Reyes," he hears Miller say through the helmet speakers. "We haven't locked on to the Ark yet. There's still a chance we might crash and -  _shit."_

The group goes silent, and Bellamy can feel their eyes on him. Miller comes up beside him. "Man, that was my bad. Sorry."

He takes a deep breath, in through his nose.  _You're going to be fine,_ he hears. "I'm fine," he says. He flips more switches.

They don't do much talking after that, not until after they're properly secured and locked onto the Ark. ("I knew we'd be fine," Miller says. Bellamy just shoves him lightly in the shoulder.) Bellamy spins the space station - artificial gravity - allowing them to walk around normally, and then they go inside.

The Ark looks like something out of the old science fiction movies Marcus likes to rent. It's all silver and blues, cold and mechanical, everything made out of something reflective. The floor clangs when they walk.

They've got to settle down for cryosleep, as Saturn and the wormhole are two years away and it makes less than no sense to spend that time awake and bored, using supplies when they don't have to. The five of them head down to the sleeping area and change into what Raven deems space pajamas - stiff and blue-gray and slightly reflective like the rest of the Ark.

Bellamy sits high up on a ledge above the "beds" and watches as Raven, Finn, and Miller all go down, water enveloping them. It looks suffocating, and he is in no hurry to do it himself.

Clarke comes up to him when the others are set and takes his blood pressure and other small vitals. "Where's your head?" she asks when she takes the device off his arm.

"The ground," he murmurs.

She doesn't respond to that immediately, just reaches behind her and gets the pills he needs to take. She watches as he downs them without water.

"Have I told you about Wells?" she asks. He shakes his head. "He's my best friend. Has been since I was a kid. I haven't seen him in ten years because he left on the first mission. He's out there, alone, on a planet in a different galaxy. We had a bit of a falling out right before he left, and I've thought about it every day since. I'm kind of terrified to see him again."

He doesn't ask for specifics, just asks, "What about the others?"

She furrows her brow. "Others? You mean the first mission crew?"

"Yeah."

Clarke reaches down and starts to pick at a loose thread on her pants, and Bellamy has to look away while he listens. "There are eleven others. Lexa, Gustus, Anya, Indra, Fox, Harper, Kyle, John Murphy, John Mbege, Roma and Monroe. Unfortunately, we only have enough supplies to make it to three of the planets, the ones that belong to Lexa, Murphy, and Wells. Which is fine, as the rest of the planets proved to be unreliable anyway. Murphy is...angry. At what, none of us are sure. The world in general, probably. He's sarcastic and crass, but he's good at his job. His planet is the first we'll come up on."

"And Lexa?" Bellamy asks.

She takes a moment to answer, a pause so pregnant he can feel the swell of it. "Lexa was in charge of the first mission. Her planet is the second one." That's all she says, but he figures there's a lot more there. He doesn't pry.

He hears her shift to stand and head back down to the tanks. "Don't stay up too much longer," she warns, prepping herself for sleep. "You're wasting your breath, and those pills will wear off eventually. If you have to wake me up for more, I'll be pissed."

Her tank goes down with a  _whir_ , and then he's alone.

Bellamy makes his way to the communication center, wanting to send a video before he goes down. He settles in front of the camera and waits for the red button to signal.

“Hey guys,” he says. “We made it to the Ark just fine. It’s….it’s something else up here.” He can see the earth through the window to his right. It’s drifting further and further every second, but he can still make out the swirl of clouds in the atmosphere. “We’re surrounded by so much of nothing. You never really think about that, down on the ground. Anyway, uh, I just wanted to say I’m about to head down to sleep. I love you guys. O, I hope you like your box.

“I’ll see you in two years.”

**Author's Note:**

> part two should be up soon. unbetaed, so any mistakes belong to me and only me.
> 
> come talk to me on [tumblr.](http://intevstellar.tumblr.com)


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